Deja Blue (26 page)

Just then Kunati entered, barring her way out, but what froze Rae was his attire. He wore a green uniform— the uniform of the local sheriff’s office. He looked stricken to see that Carl Orvison wasn’t alone. “Dr. Hiyakawa, Chief…if I could have a moment to talk to you.”

“Amos, you’re impersonating an officer,” replied Orvison, a smile wishing to turn to laughter, but he caught himself, arms outstretched. “What’s all this, Amos?”

“I’m done with detective work here, Carl. Joined the Sheriff’s Office this morning. They need a man with some experience in gathering forensic evidence.”

“What?” Carl’s bulging eyes could not believe what his brain had just interpreted. “What’re you talking about, Amos?”

“Working for the county now.”

“Just like that? Overnight?”

“I thought a clean break’d be the best way.”

“I’d best leave you two to discuss this,” said Rae, feeling quite in the way, trying to remove herself to the hallway but having to work around Amos. For a moment, it felt as if they were again fencing.

“No…stay, Doctor,” countered Kunati. “You may’s well hear this too.”

Rae took an unsteady step back into the office. Kunati continued, adding, “Look, I’ve been unhappy with my situation for a long time, Carl, and you know that.”

“You have a future with the city, Amos.”

He shook his head, doubtful. “Been too long spinning my wheels here, Carl. And I don’t believe I have any sort of future ahhh….under your thumb, Carl, andand—”

“Amos, why do you take that attitude? Under my thumb? Under my guidance!”

“However you want to paint it, I’ve already decided. I’m done with things here and this case.”

Orvison looked as if he might pound his fist on his desk. “You know I had no choice but to fire on that kid in the dark. He took two shots at us—two, count ’em, and he’d’ve taken a third had I not stopped him. Maybe he’d’ve killed you or me.”

“It will always trouble me, Carl. How ‘bout you?”

“I don’t give a damn his age or his upbringing if he’s firing a blessed zip gun at a cop, and especially this cop!” Carl beat his chest with his fist instead of the desk. “I just work on instinct alone.”

“It’s come to a head, Carl, with your bringing a psychic in on my case without giving me a chance to work the case, and rubbing my face in it every step of the way.”

“That’s never been my intention, Amos. My intention was to—”

“To hell with your intentions, and to hell with this department, and to hell with your psychic mumbo-jumbo! You’ve turned the investigation into a carnival sideshow, and you’re making Charleston the laughing stock of the nation. Turn on a TV set. Listen to what they’re saying about us on CNN!”

Kunati stormed out, Carl rushing down the hall after him, shouting, “You have a contract with the city, Amos! Amos!” He came back dejected. “Did everything I could for that kid, and for what? He stabs me in the back this way?”

It was a development that Rae had not foreseen, but all she could think of was the man had gone from wearing a gray flannel suit as a detective in the city force to less pay with the county and to wearing a green uniform and a Smokey the Bear hat. Green, the dominant color of Rae’s case. Green, the color of his fencing uniform. Green, the color now of his new working uniform. Coincidence? Possibly, sure, and she meant it. Unlike most law enforcement people, Rae held a healthy respect for coincidence. How many configurations and shapes and spirals existed in nature? A limited number actually. Circles and concentric designs, the spiraled stream of water racing down a drain like that of a hurricane for example, or the flared shape of leaves, or the veins in leaves so like a complete Christmas tree pattern. Coincidence or nature? How many patterns on the planet were there?

Logically, things repeated in patterns everywhere, even in human behavior. As coincidence happened in cellular tissue, in microbes, in insect life, plant life, animal life, the shape of things past, and things to come. So why did cops find designs in human nature impossible whenever anyone used the word coincidence? After all, coincidence was life, and life was a series of repeating patterns, and if so, coincidence followed like birds in a V formation. In fact every time anyone learns anything it comes of seeing the connections and the patterns.

Still sometimes coincidence was no coincidence. She knew this all too well from experience. One had to keep an open mind either way.

All the same, she felt fairly sure that Amos’s penchant for green clothe of late must be simple coincidence and not the other. While she got a seething, trapped anger coming off him, she could not see Kunati braining people with a hammer and then driving 3-Penny nails into the skull and eyes—or farming out the work to another.

All the same, a small corner of her brain kept an open window devoted to the notion that the disaffected cop could be her killer. Keep the mind open to all possibilities, just in case. Stranger things had happened. She considered Kunati with all the conflicting thoughts racing in her mind and said, “Detective to street cop, Mr. Kunati, seems a helluva stunt to gain sympathy, if you ask me. I should have known you held a strong prejudice against anything paranormal, and that it stems from your childhood.”

“Childhood?” asked Kunati. “I had no childhood, and I’m not going to stand here, Dr. Hiaykawa and listen to you psychoanalyze me, so perhaps you should call it a night. That’s what I’m going to do.”

It was the equivalent of a slap to the face. Rae sighed heavily, nodded, and replied, “I’ll say goodnight then.”

Amos Kunati marched out like Shakespeare’s Othello before the great fall.

“I’ll have his desk cleaned out and another man in his place come morning,” Carl said to Rae, openly angry now, sounding hurt as well.

Orvison met Rae’s stare. Neither said a word. For that moment, a near telepathic communication leapt between them, a message: We might well be better off without the negative vibes. Maybe Amos was in the way all along. Psychic interference.

Despite Orvison’s admission that he’d not wanted her on the case anymore than had Kunati, Carl had kept this to himself, not sharing it with Kunati. This appeared obvious now. Carl had also managed to keep an open mind. Amos, on the other hand, felt an unremitting displeasure at being in Rae’s company, at her being in his squad room, and at her being on ‘his’ case. Typical man. Threatened. Defensive. Paranoid. She’d thought the fencing match had made a difference, but obviously not.

Orvison’s phone rang and he picked it up. For some time, he listened intently to the voice on the other end, and Rae remained, silent, waiting. After a time, she recognized the voice on the phone as Orvison’s desk sergeant, a stout man who saw to sorting out walk-ins, complaints, and 9-1-1 alerts. Sergeant Germain’s booming voice even reached Rae where she stood at the window overlooking downtown Charleston. Still, Rae caught only snatches of words between the chief and the sergeant, but she knew immediately it had to do with the single most important case on Orvison’s plate.

Carl barked, “See that my car is ready, Sergeant.” When he dropped the phone onto its cradle, he said, “We’ve got a living witness, a survivor of a botched job he’s made of his latest attack.”

“You’re kidding?” It was an amazing break if true. She glanced at her watch, surprised to see that it read 9:45PM. “Not like him to strike this time of night. He’s followed a ritual up till now. He’d ritualistically stick to it unless something drastic in his life’s occurred.”

“Whatever his reasons…whatever we find, we’ve got to check it out. You coming along?”

“Absolutely.”

They rushed for the garage and Carl’s waiting cruiser.

TWENTY TWO

The drive proved solemn and quick, but they soon pulled into the already crowded area, a house on 60th street just off southeast Charleston’s main thoroughfare, McCorkle Avenue. A pair of detectives who’d been working peripherally on the case from the outset, Jim Hodges and Kevin Allen came toward Chief Orvison, and from their dejected body language, somehow Rae knew it couldn’t be good news after all. “Detective Kevin Allen, a stout, square-jawed, boyishly handsome man with sandy hair and a lively set of blue eyes leaned in toward the window and said, “Sorry, Chief, but it turns out just another publicity seeker looking for her fifteen minutes of fame.”

“Who called it in?”

“The fourteen year old daughter. Thought it’d be cool. Says the Sleepwalker killings are all the talk at Capitol High, and she thought it’d be cool to get her face on the tube.”

Detective Jim Hodges leaned in at the other window opposite, close in on Rae, and he added, “Supposedly, the family dog jumped the guy, took out a chunk of flesh, some such bullshit.”

Every detective Rae knew had early in his career honed that internal ‘bullshit detector’ so necessary to a line of work that involved criminals and the general public. It had long been a staple of police work to accept the fact that, for whatever reason, everybody lied, covered up, or skewed the truth. An increasing number for just this—their moment of fame.

False alarm. There had been many in this case, too many. For an area populated by a people who seemed removed from the beaten track, the allure of a Channel 2 TV news van in the driveway, of microphones shoved in one’s face, of fame and notoriety, appeared wholly intact.

“Heard some rumor that Kunati stepped down from the case,” said Detective Allen. “What gives, boss?”

“Amos has done more than step down from the case, gentlemen,” replied Carl Orvison, his voice filled with fatigue and frustration in equal dose. “Amos has quit the force.”

“Quit?” The detectives looked quizzically at one another.

“Gone over to the Kanawha County Sheriff’s Office.”

“Now that’s a shocker!”

“Thought he was gunning for your job, Chief,” said Hodges, “come the next election.”

“Anybody want my job, they can damn well come and get it,” Orvison fired back.

“Hey, Chief, didn’t mean anything by it.” Hodges fidgeted with an unlit cigarette.

Orivson squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. “Sorry…didn’t mean to dump on you guys. Look, fourteen years old or forty, we slam this girl with obstruction and whatever else you can think of. She wants notoriety, let’s give it to her.”

“You’ll just be givin’ the punk what she wants,” argued Hodges.

“Book her, fingerprints, the whole nine yards, and let the parents rant to the press for all I care. We need to send a message to the public we’re going to prosecute anyone abusing 9-1-1.”

“I was hoping you’d say that, boss.” Allen grinned wide, straightened, and marched back toward the house he’d exited. The bounce in his step said it all; he was going to enjoy cuffing the kid.

Hodges scurried to catch up. If nothing else, they’d have the satisfaction of a ‘collar’ of sorts tonight.

“You’re pretty quiet of a sudden,” Orvison said to Rae, where he found her waiting in the glum quiet of the cruiser.

“We got our hopes up, and they were dashed again,” began Rae. “A living eyewitness who might give a sketch artist a chance at a likeness of this nutcase, some details that I’ve not been able to fathom. Sure, we have reason to be angry at this kid.”

“But you think putting her into the system might be a bit harsh?”

“I didn’t say that; however, I was thinking of my Nia…just turned fifteen. I could see her pulling a stunt like this all too easily.”

“Kids…they don’t think past the deed to the consequences.”

“And who’s to blame a kid nowadays, given all the irresponsible acts of our so-called leaders.”

He shrugged. “Or those depicted on TV and movie screens that pass for comics just poking fun, heh? Brings down any notions of glory and the American way these days?”

“The adult world has created plenty of confusion in their world, and plenty to be confused about—beyond the usual confusion of adolescence.”

“Nice speech but I’m going to teach this one kid a damn lesson she won’t forget any time soon.”

“Your call.”

“Damned right it is.” He pulled from the curb, returned to McCorkle and shot onto I-64 for downtown and Rae’s hotel. They traveled in a silence thick with what Rae silently characterized as ‘a grinding-teeth atmosphere’ wherein each wanted to say something but both remained stubbornly quiet.

Silent the entire way. Until he pulled into the circle at the hotel. “This thing with Amos has got to me.” “I can well imagine.”

“He’s not acting rational, and he’s made a career decision he’ll regret someday… possibly as soon as tomorrow when light of day filters into his thick skull.”

“You like Amos, despite his being a pain in the ass, heh, Carl?”

“I’d’ve given him a great lot of mentoring if he’d’ve been receptive. Damn but I tried.”

It dawned on her now. He’d treated the other man like a son. “Tell me, Carl, you got children? A son somewhere?”

A deep silence overtook the chief now. Something so thick it could be cut with only a bone saw, she thought. She’d hit a nerve.